Most boring/difficult books you've ever read.

[Crystal Cuckoo]

I'm going to say The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. It wasn't boring, but my GOD it was difficult to stay conscious as Tolkien proceded to describe the meal Frodo was having in such detail.

However, I finished The Fellowship, which I thought was a feat considering I was ten when I read it. Finishing it felt like an accomplishment, and I geared myself up for the Two Towers.

I got to chapter five before chucking the book out. FUCKING ENTS AND THEIR FUCKING SIX PAGE SONGS. FUCK YOUUUUUU, ENTS.

 

[The Hairminator]

The Bible, especially since I'm not the least religious.

Oh, and Dante's Inferno in a 1910's edition.

 

[JesterRaiin]

Works of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. They could be written in language used by Australopithecuses and difference wouldn't be that big. :|

 

[VulakAerr]

The Silmarillion I found very difficult to read at the beginning. Once it gets going and stops reeling off paragraph after paragraph of names at you, it's pretty good. Children of Hurin I've still not yet finished.

Les Miserables was difficult to read in places. Hugo is descriptive almost to a fault.

Very surprised to see people here criticising To Kill A Mockingbird and anything by Jane Austen though. To each their own, I suppose.

 

[Yarpie]

Turn of the Screw. It's like throwing yourself against a brick wall, the bloody thing is damn near impossible to actually get through, and even then the ending is one of those "Wat do you think?"-kind of endings. I really hated that book...

 

[AcacianLeaves]

Response Type 3: "Important" books that were relevant and changed society at the time of publishing, but the language use and situations do not translate well to modernity so you have no idea why people think highly of them. (IE anything by Jane Austen)

Jane Austen was a 19th century novelist. They did not change anything they were important at the time because they were the precise equivalents of tv soap operas. Seriously, they were published chapter by chapter and filled with 'action' that people would keep on reading because 'lord British just kissed his wife's twin sister' and 'amnesia' etc etc. They did not change things. Post WWI novels did.

You're absolutely right, there is nothing about stories where a female lead bemoans the fact that her entire existence is dependent on marriage that could possibly have any relevance to 19th century English society. Why would I think such a silly thing?

 

[unbeatablemoody]

Agreeing with alot of people here, but To Kill A Mockingbird was TERRIBLE! If I didn't have to read it, I wouldn't have, which is way plot summaries are the best in my english literature exams!!

 

[Lissa-QUON]

Displaying my heresy here, I'll say ANYTHING BY TOLKIEN.

DAMMIT! Ninja's everywhere up in the ***** ¬¬

I'd say the Lord of the rings really. Because the Hobbit is awesome and Witty and Charming right from the begining....

I love The Hobbit ...

♥♥

WORD, I loved The Hobbit, but Lord of the Rings just....no. Too long, too distant, couldn't manage to care for ANYONE.

 

[Lissa-QUON]

Great Gatsby - stupid rich people doing stupid horrible things. I know its like THE book of the Jazz Age but it just makes me realize how shallow and vapid the jazz age was.

Tale of Genji - I have this doorstop I pick up every so often and read another chapter or so. It's not bad per say, its just very foreign to me (well DUH) and I have a hard time understanding the people or their actions.

Dune - this book was so dense, so much going on, there was no real moment that felt superfluous. Hilariously though, after I read it the first time (spent ages trying to get through it) I actually loved it. So yea, ***** of a read but I found it quite worth it.

Whitechapel Gods - odd little steam punk novel I picked up for light reading. Turned out it was a very dense strangely written reading that took me months of putting down and picking back up again to finish. Sadly it had some excellent visual descriptions but the plot and characters, were so...bizarre.

Already mentioned LOTR in a post above, but yea...THAT.

 

[Buizel91]

The Bible, Budum-tishhhhhh!

On a serious note it was a book in secondary school, can't remember the name, i was in year 8 and the book just dragged on and on...

I hate books =\ well, most.

 

[Red Right Hand]

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh.

"Ah hate cunts like that. Cunts like Bebgie. Cunts that are intae baseball-batting every fucker that's different; pakis, poofs, n what huv ye. Fuckin failures in a country ay failures. It's nae good blamin it oan the English fir colonising us. Ah don't hate the English. They're just wankers. We are colonised by wankers. We can't even pick a decent, vibrant, healthy culture to be colonised by. No. We're ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? The lowest of the fuckin low, the scum of the earth. The most wretched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat intae creation. Ah don't hate the English. They just git oan wi the shite thuv goat. Ah hate the Scots."

And that exerpt is one of the easier passages in the book.

 

[ThePantomimeThief]

American Psycho was like getting repeatedly hit over the head with a brick wearing an Armani suit. It's brilliant, though, but incredibly difficult. The same with Herzog.

In terms of a book I found difficult and thought was awful - Tom Jones by Henry Fielding. It's one of those books banded around under the slogan 'The Quintessential English Novel', and it's shit. Sorry, but it is. It's also completely irrelevant in the modern world.

 

[Chaos-Spider]

To Kill a Mockingbird. Forced to read it in English, boring as shit. Also pretty much anything else that was assigned reading in school, somehow they always manage to pick the dullest most boring books.

I ended up reading this twice and saw the old black and white movie for school. Its kind of OK I guess. The really boring ones are probably William Wordsworth's Prellude (although technically a poem) and the middle two Twilight novels.

On a relatively unrelated note. Has anyone read the City of Glass, I can't remember who wrote it but it has a recommendation by Stephanie Myer on the front cover and I want to make sure it isn't awful before I consider exposing myself to the first few pages of it.

 

[Embright]

While I don't want to discredit the great Charles Dickens, everything I've ever read from him is either depressing or boring...
i.e. The little matchstick Girl and Great Expectations.

The most difficult thing I think I tried to read was War and Peace in high school, perhaps I would breeze through it nowadays since I am older.

Unlike quite a few people on here, I thought the bible was very interesting and not that hard to read. It's funny how you see the difference between what the bible says and what people do though when you finally read the thing. I'm an atheist for those wondering, and I'd say that if more people read the bible, there would be less religion.

 

[Trivun]

Displaying my heresy here, I'll say ANYTHING BY TOLKIEN.

Actually, I agree with this. I read the original LOTR books, and The Hobbit, and just couldn't stand them. And I'm an avid reader, I've been reading since I was barely a toddler (my nan taught me at a very early age) and started reading proper literature as soon as I started secondary school, aged 11. I love good literature, planning to read a bunch of Gothic Horror when I get some free time (Frankenstein, Dorian Grey, etc.). But I just could not read the Lord Of The Rings books. I feel slightly bad about it, especially as I loved the films. Hell, my uncle took me years ago to see the two places that inspired the Two Towers of Orthanc and Minas Morgul (Sarehole Mill and Perret's Folly, both near my family home in Birmingham). And even that wasn't inspiring enough for me.

Sorry Tolkien, you're awesome, but your books were just too complex even for me...

 

[Chaos-Spider]

Response Type 3: "Important" books that were relevant and changed society at the time of publishing, but the language use and situations do not translate well to modernity so you have no idea why people think highly of them. (IE anything by Jane Austen)

Jane Austen was a 19th century novelist. They did not change anything they were important at the time because they were the precise equivalents of tv soap operas. Seriously, they were published chapter by chapter and filled with 'action' that people would keep on reading because 'lord British just kissed his wife's twin sister' and 'amnesia' etc etc. They did not change things. Post WWI novels did.

You're absolutely right, there is nothing about stories where a female lead bemoans the fact that her entire existence is dependent on marriage that could possibly have any relevance to 19th century English society. Why would I think such a silly thing?

The only Jane Austen Novel I've read that didn't have zombies or sea monsters added to it was Emma, and I thought it was pretty alright after reading it twice and select portions of the Jane Austen for Dummies. I see it as a period piece showing how life and love was seen by the landed gentry in the earliest 19th century. It also allows me to say that I have yet to see any good published Romance, but then I don't get romance and like history.

Apologies if this ends up a double post.

 

[Xan Holbrook]

This is going to seem like a red rag to every potential emo/literary historian bull, but 'Catcher In The Rye' was absolutely shockingly bad. Poorly written, a protaganist who seems whiney at his most emotional and dragging on and on with its own air of self-importance like every U2 album. If there is any book to define what was to come in the sixties with the dawn of the teenager, it's Jack Kerouac's On The Road. Infinitely more interesting, life-affirming and downright rebellious, On The Road can really show you what it means to be alive.

 

[caselj01]

For me, the worst by far in terms of difficulty is Arabian Nights, a collection of middle eastern stories from the medieval age. Not only do you have Inception-like stories within stories, but people seem to do things for no apparent reason. Also, in half of the stories the resolution is in the form of "And then a genie appeared and sorted everything out".

 

[MadeinHell]

Well...
I remember a book that I read when I was about... 11? or 12. Anyway it's a book by Maria Konopnicka called "Nasza szkapa" or "Our Nag" (if I remember the proper translation).
The book was about 80 pages long, but it was THE MOST BORING BOOK I ever had read.

If I was able to read more than page a day it would be a success.

PS. Also Niche is overrated. People look far too much into that drunken gibberish of a text.

 

[Lyndraco]

The God Delusion, although a terrific book, was hard for me to read at the time; I must have been... Well, too young to read it, that's for sure. I've since gone back and read it again and it still tongue ties me from time to time.

Richard Dawkins has quite the vocab.

It took me awhile to read the God Delusion as well. I liked it, but it took forever. Almost as long as it took me to finally get through Crime and Punishment.